Do I Enable "IDE DMA Transfer Access" option in BIOS??

[saber800]

Hi, I just got a MSI K7N2 Delta-L nForce2 Ultra board and the bios has an option for "IDE DMA Transfer Access" and I was wondering if I should enable it or not? This is an Phoenix - AwardBIOS. Here is what I have in the IDE Function Setup (under Integrated Peripherals):

OnChip IDE Channel0... Enabled
Primary Master PIO... Auto
Primary Slave PIO... Auto
Primary Master UDMA... Auto
Primary Slave UDMA... Auto
OnChip IDE Channel1... Enabled
Secondary Master PIO... Auto
Secondary Slave PIO... Auto
Secondary Master UDMA... Auto
Secondary Slave UDMA... Auto
IDE Prefetch Mode... Enabled
IDE DMA Transfer Access... Disabled <------- The one in question
IDE HDD Block Mode... Enabled

So what do you think? Do you have it enabled? I do have the UDMA on Auto on all channels too.

Thanks for any input you can give.

 

[Boonesmi]

just leave them all on "auto" and assuming your harddrive isnt some ancient drive then it will be detected and run in dma mode

for the most part you just want to tell the bios to "load default setup" and leave everything where it auto sets it unless you know a specific thing you want to change, or you know what your doing

 

[Noid]

Check it in Windows too ,,, Device manager/ IDE primary/secondary/ properties/ advanced settings
(I assume you have 80pin DMA cables)

ooo ,,, post 900

 

[Iron Woode]

Is it possible it is the same thing that many SIS boards have which allow DMA transfer before windows loads up?

 

[Peter]

Enabling that will make BIOS itself use IDE DMA transfers too. This speeds up OS installation and boot.

 

[KF]

To be clear, Windows resets these things its own way. The BIOS setting is how the computer is initialized by the BIOS.

The default is DISABLED because there is some hardware that malfunctions with AUTO (where the BIOS gets a report from the HD about the modes and sets the best) or ENABLED. Unless you have a well-stocked junkpile, you are unlikely to run into that.

For a long time I have automatically set DMA on for CDROMs in Windows. One day I did this with a "senior" CDROM and the computer totally locked up Windows. Nothing moved. No blue screen. Completely locked. After a reset, Windows would lock up as it booted. Safe mode did not help because there is no way to change the DMA setting. I had to disconnect the CD and put it on the same cable with the HD, because if I just disconnected it, booted Window, and then reconnected where it was, Windows still locked up as it booted.